Customer Reviews

Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) - A movie about They Might Be Giants

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This review can be broken into two: the film, and the DVD.

Positive and negative reviews of "Gigantic" stressed A.J. Schnack's uncritical look at the band, which worried me at first: the violins from "Kiss Me, Son of God" started playing in my head. Fortunately, that isn't a valid criticism of this film. Schnack loves his Giants, but it's not like rock documentaries, for all their preening and scowling ("The Filth and the Fury" immediately comes to mind), really get down to smashing icons. John Flansburgh and John Linnell, to their credit, don't take a Johnny Rotten plunge into ego and self-congratulation: whatever you think of their music, the Johns seem perfectly affable and modest about their particular niche in pop culture.

Despite that, "Gigantic" as a film is flawed. TMBG's story of non-conformists not conforming is worth telling, but Schnack's narrative is extremely choppy. He starts in their childhood, shoots out to New York, spends an inordinate amount of time on "Don't Let's Start," skips "Lincoln" and barrels into Elektra, all in the space of a few breathless minutes. You feel like you've just landed on your head when the segment on "Flood" begins, and you wish you could hear more about the East Village Club scene of the 80s, or the recording of the first albums.

The interviews aren't especially well-edited, either, and Ira Glass and Sarah Vowell (no slam on their other work) go on too long about the uniqueness of TMBG, which has already been established by the time they appear. The film is saved in part by Schnack's sense of humor: he does a killer parody of Ken Burns at one point in the film. The Johns themselves -- funny, creative and immensely likeable -- are the great grace of "Gigantic." As Robert Krulwich says, they're secure in their "somethingness," and you gradually grow to admire their hard work and stubborn refusal to bow to label or audience. What's left at the end is an imperfect but unusual music film, one with little conflict but an inspiring point about being yourself, keeping your head and following your muse, an accomplishment few other professional bands can claim.

Once you plunge into the remainder of the disc, though, the failings of "Gigantic" are quickly forgotten. The DVD is terrific, and not simply because of the quantity of extras: there's plenty of stuff diehards will enjoy, from concert chatter to an appearance on Nick Rocks in the late 80s, as well as an amusing and generally insightful commentary from Flansburgh, Linnell, Schnack and Vowell. Other extras, though, make the band's case for greatness in ways "Gigantic" alone could not: five of Adam Bernstein's groundbreaking videos for the band are showcased, with introductions from Bernstein and the Johns themselves. There's also rare and exhilarating footage of the two-man band performing "Mr. Me" and "Hide Away Folk Family" in Milwaukee in the late 80s. And, in a rare and laudable bit of generosity from musician to musician, you get Cub's original "New York City," a great song in its own right that got better in the Johns' rearrangement.

A number of DVDs will add extras willy-nilly with little thought toward advancing the viewer's understanding of the film. "Gigantic" not only illuminates the film, but strengthens its argument: the features ultimately enhance the movie's point on the Johns' greatness. It's rare to see a DVD flesh out a film so well, and it's a shame we don't see it more.

Much has been made of the quirky touches that director A.J. Schnack gives his feature-film debut, Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), a documentary about the alternative-pop duo They Might Be Giants. The band is well-known for working in a wide range of musical styles (punk and New Wave, power-pop, country, folk, jazz, etc.) and writing about subject matter that you don't normally expect to find in pop songs (cyclops, night-lights, puppet heads, Belgian painter James Ensor, president James K. Polk, etc.), and this film is often as clever and unpredictable as TMBG themselves. It begins with a speech from Illinois senator Paul Simon, and it includes a parody of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary somewhere in the middle, a scene in which a group of high school students try to interpret the lyrics of "Particle Man," and a few interludes in which such funnypeople as Harry Shearer, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Richter, and Michael McKean give dramatic readings of TMBG lyrics.

Despite these unconventional touches, though, Gigantic's narrative arc is pretty straightforward. The two bandmates -- paunchy, bespectacled singer-guitarist John Flansburgh and wiry, floppy-haired singer-keyboardist-accordionist John Linnell -- take us from their school days in Lincoln, Massachusetts in the 1970s, to their move to Brooklyn in the early '80s and the performance-art scene out of which they formed TMBG, to the creation of their trademark "dial-a-song" service, through the latter half of the '80s when they became the most successful indie band of that time ("That's like being the world's tallest midget," Flansburgh remarks in an interview), through their move from an independent record label to the major label Elektra and their switch from a duo sound to a full-band sound in the first half of the '90s (much to the dismay of many of their early fans), up to their late-'90s film and TV work after they got dropped by Elektra. In addition to some terrific music-video clips and archival footage of the Johns, many of their former and current associates are on hand to help tell their story. Of course, there are a few too many fan testimonials, and there isn't a whole lot of information about the Johns' personal lives (although both Johns sport wedding bands, Linnell has a son named Henry, and Flansburgh's wife Robin is alluded to as the singer of "Dr. Evil," TMBG's song for 1999's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me).

This backstory is interwoven with scenes of the Johns in action, circa 2001: They record Mink Car, their first studio album in 5 years; they perform a big show at the Polish National Home (from which much of the film's concert footage was taken); they drop by Late Night With Conan O'Brien and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart; Flansburgh takes us into his home studio and records a dial-a-song demo; Linnell takes his son to the park and laments about not getting to see him much because of touring; and the Johns give an in-store performance at a Tower Records in New York to celebrate the midnight release of the Mink Car CD (in a sad coincidence, just hours before the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11). The film turns unexpectedly touching as the Johns each discuss what the other brings to the table (the showmanship and business smarts of the outgoing Flansburgh, the melodic gifts of the introverted Linnell) and open up about their own feelings of inadequacy (Flansburgh as a musician and songwriter, Linnell as an "essential" part of the band). Otherwise, the film refrains from taking itself too seriously, presenting the Johns not as great men, but as a couple of smart, adorable, funny, talented, independent-minded and basically decent guys who -- with their integrity, strong friendship and unique musical collaboration -- have managed to achieve success (however modest and unlikely) on their own terms for over 20 years.

P.S.: I won't even try to describe the wealth of extra material included on this disc, but suffice it to say that I highly recommend everything under "bonus materials" (additional live performances, a few audio-only goodies, the hilarious promotional video for their 1990 LP Flood, etc.) and "music videos," as well as the 2 deleted scenes and the 3 extra Polish National Home performances; these are certainly worthy supplements to the film. The "raw footage and interviews" stuff is mostly hit-or-miss, although I enjoyed the "Doctor Worm" sound-check, the radio-show performance of "Cowtown," and the amusing exchange between Flansburgh and his wife about buying a new belt.

P.P.S.: Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) has no MPAA rating, but I think it would merit a hard PG-13 or a light R for brief strong language. Ultimately, though, the Johns themselves come across as positive role models, and their story could be inspiring to older kids. I highly recommend this film for ages 14 and up.

John Flansburgh and John Linnell burst onto the music scene in the mid-'80s as a two-man band with a name cribbed from an old George C. Scott movie: "They Might Be Giants."

Armed with accordions, clarinets, wicked guitars, tape loops, drum machines and voices like Big Bird, They Might Be Giants created their own hilariously geeky genre of music. They had catchy hooks to spare and a knack for existential, caffeinated Fisher-Price tongue-twisters and wordplay.

Much like Brian Wilson once created what he called "pocket symphonies," the Giants made "pocket pop songs."

"Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns" - doesn't give a clear,
chronological history of the band but does offer a refreshing look at two gifted musicians who usually hide behind their wall of sound and mirth.

Through clips of their live shows, videos and cogent interviews (with Flansburgh and Linnell, manager Jamie Kitman, former Pixie's frontman Frank Black, authors Dave Eggers and Sarah Vowell and others), the movie covers some of the Giants' best-known songs and the touchstones of their brief history: their formation and "do-it-yourself" early days; their Dial-A-Song service (basically an answering machine at Flansburgh's old apartment that offered a new song each day for free); the problems they encountered with their label during the grunge era; and their recent resurgence via the Internet.

As with anything of this sort, "Gigantic" isn't for nonfans (even for a moderate fan, the uniqueness of the Giants' music makes a little go a long way), but the group's countless devotees will be extremely pleased with the DVD and its giant's portion of extras.

This is how all music DVDs should be stocked: eight music videos; tons of deleted scenes and interviews; an audio presentation of their "This American Life" profile and the group's old TV appearances on "Joy Farm" and "Nick Rocks."

When my nephew Tim did me the great favor of hooking me up with these two guys, I wondered what planet they came from. This and the other DVD make it obvious: Brooklyn.

What will you learn from this disc:

1. Creative people are obsessive. The output pours from one of our Johns like it did from Mozart. He almost cannot help it. There are simply people who exude creativity, and they cannot stop themselves.

2. The talents diverge and complement. You have a John who schmoozes and a John who stays back and creates. You have a tough John and a gentle John. You have a John with glasses and a John without glasses.

3. I've never heard anybody play around with musical form and poetry like these guys can.

A carp: why so little about Apollo 18?? That was one of their best, but it's shorted in the film.

Although it's not what I expected, this DVD is excellent. There is lots of great footage. Great guest stars like friends of Lincoln, Mass., Andy Richter, the 'Dial-a-Song lady', etc. Mainly the film consists of interviews and live concert footage. This was a bit of a let down, as I like to see the band going about their normal thing during documentaries (such like in Bittersweet Motel). Regardless, the excellent interviews and live footage make up for this weakness.

A word on extras. The extras double the greatness of this DVD. There are plenty of great extras. It might actually take longer to get through all the extras than it takes to watch the film. The extras are a big part of this dvd: more interviews, audio clips, music videos, etc.

If you're a TMBG fan, definitely pick up this DVD. You won't regret it.

I've only very recently become a more ardent fan of TMBG, and when I saw this DVD at the store, I picked it up mostly on a whim. I'm glad that I did.

I found the documentary to be charming--informative especially for a new fan like myself, I'd imagine, but with enough personality & humor to make it interesting for anyone interested in the band. The various commentators in the film injected it with tons of humor & ga-ga fan insights (especially Sarah Vowell & Syd Straw). When cross-cut with the very humble storytelling & comments of John & John, it made for a nice kind of dichotomy that seemed to say a lot about the band's relationship with their fans, and fame in general. The sheer amount of extras also impresses me--I had seen some of those older videos from the 80s when I was a kid, and it was a treat to rediscover them. (Plus, the outtakes from the fan video booth were priceless.)

All in all, a good buy--this seems like something that I'll be able to watch over and over, whenever I need a visual TMBG fix.

High points:
This documentary does a nice job of taking a look into the minds of They Might Be Giants, as well as people in their periphery - from former band managers to collaborators to radio hosts. (An amusing moment of note comes from an interview with "This American Life's" Ira Glass - where he says, "It's a shame these guys are in They Might Be Giants, because if they had just stumbled across the music, these guys would have *loved* it.")
Much of the extras - omitted interviews, several videos (plus commentary), Audio from Sarah Vowell's dial-a-song radio piece, the original version of "New York City." - really sweeten the deal and make this package an amazing bargain for the money.

Low points:
The commentary track offers very little insight - mostly we hear Flansburgh and Sarah Vowell talk about an instant message conversation they had a few days before taping the commentary... However, while little is offered on the commentary, one does go away with a better familiarity with how the two Johns communicate with one another.
The documentary itself is also slightly spotty. At points it tries to be witty, at another point it parodies Ken Burns' cinematic style...and the quirks do tend to distract you from what otherwise would be a decent comprehensive look at the past 25 years of TMBG...

But overall, this DVD is highly recommended to TMBG fans, and worth watching to the casual fan.
I'll be looking forward to the sequel in 2028.

Though not an "official" TMBG release in the strictest sense this documentary DVD is a great package of the band's history and makes a fine complement to the "Dial-A-Song" CD collection. The documentary itself provides a history and appreciation of the band while at the same time an homage of sorts to past rockumentaries (both "The Last Waltz" and "This Is Spinal Tap" come to mind, and even, strangely enough, "Woodstock"). It's also very similar in style to what you might expect from the Two Johns themselves, quirky tangents and all. The appreciations are well-woven into the history. The best part is that the history is by and large a friendly one. No drug breakdowns to record, no rise-and-fall Behind The Music scenario, and no bittersweet "where are they now" ending because the band is just as active now as ever.

The mighty fine documentary is more than supplemented by the wealth of extra materials here. I don't have the "Direct From Brooklyn" DVD so there might be some overlap with some of the videos, but there are so many extra features things here that it's almost like the movie is the supplement, providing context for all the short clips. The historic early videos all receive proper introductions that are in the same style (same interviews) as the movie itself. There are rare TV appearances for Nickolodeon and the BBC. Concert footage filmed for the movie but not used in the movie is shown in full here. (Not the full concert, but 3 songs from it.) I could go through the list but you can see the list above and agree that there's a lot to see, and most of it is quite good.

The reason for the 4 stars instead of five is that the sound and image on some of the archival stuff isn't that great. No surprise, given the age of some of the footage, or the low-budget conditions under which it was filmed. This goes for elements shot for the doc itself (the instore performances from Sep. 10 '01 for instance) as well as some of the ancient TV performances. Probably not much that could have been done about this, and it's not a disappointment but the defects are really noticeable on this DVD. Also the sound levels change from one clip to the next so that you might have to raise or lower the volume every few minutes while watching the bonus clips.

But overall this is a great bargain. Although the documentary wasn't a Gigantic money maker, it's a great document of the band and hopefully in this form can spread the group's reknown and popularity a bit farther so that these guys can afford to keep making fun music.

This DVD is a tremendous bargain from the finished movie to all of the extra stuff. It will keep you amused and entertained for days. As a 53 yr old fan, I'm not the demographic that the guys are going for. However, I am always amazed at their creativity and diversity of all that they do. This movie is a real showcase for their talent.

Ostensibly, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns is a documentary about the legendary rock duo They Might Be Giants. In reality, it looks, sounds, plods along, and altogether feels more like a PBS special about They Might Be Giants. The kind of program you watch on a Sunday evening that simply repeats all of the details that you read regularly and repeatedly in every magazine article about the subject you've ever read.

I expected this documentary to tell the story of the They Might Be Giants. Instead, it is mostly made up of interviewees speaking about their own opinions regarding the band. It starts out fine enough, John Linnell and John Flansburgh appear on camera, trying to remember how they met each other, in grade school probably, and tell a funny story about Linnell being in the hospital as a boy, getting letters written by classmates as a class assignment from other children he had never talked to, Flansburgh included among them. They talk about moving to New York in 1981, trying to figure out how to perform their songs, what some early shows were like, and have plenty to say about Dial-A-Song. And that is just about it as far as the story of They Might Be Giants. The rest of Gigantic mostly features a number of interviewees who talk about the band in broad, general terms, none of them going into much detail except in a few instances. It is wholly disappointing.

Except for the early scenes about their first arriving in New York, there is almost no sense of history to the band. None of their work after the initial live shows is put into context, and there is no meaningful discussion of their cultural impact. In Gigantic, the story of their rise to stardom is essentially boiled down to a lucky break when People reviewed their 1985 demo tape, another lucky break when Adam Bernstein asked to make a video of their song Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head, and then the next thing you know MTV, Flood, The Tonight Show, a backing band, they leave Elektra, and then Long Tall Weekend. What is the problem with this narrative?

The context of these achievements and the story behind them. They're missing.

There is only a single passing text mention of Linnell's involvement with the Mundanes. Not a single word is spoken about the Tiny Toon Adventures collaboration. Barely a minute is afforded to Don't Let's Start's popularity on the college rock charts, and nothing is said of Ana Ng and that song's success. Bill Kraus is featured but he says nothing about the process of creating the self-titled debut album or Lincoln. In fact, only Flood and Long Tall Weekend are mentioned at all by name. Flansburgh briefly mentions "our debut album," in some street footage a girl is seen holding the John Henry liner notes, and Flansburgh holds a copy of Mink Car. As far as Gigantic is concerned, Lincoln, Apollo 18, and Factory Showroom don't exist. Have you ever seen a documentary about a band where only two of the band's albums are actually directly mentioned, the rest being ignored or glossed over?

No one mentions the band's frustation with Elektra regarding Apollo 18; the documentary basically attributes their fallout with Elektra to new management and a dispute about a show in Tokyo. No one mentions that John Henry was their best reviewed album, and their highest charting album on the Billboard charts, or the effect of changing labels and production techniques on their music. Flansburgh, who has repeatedly said that Factory Showroom is the album he's most proud of, doesn't say a word about it here.

The movie skirts around the less pleasant issues and hardly touches the everyday lives of the Johns. Any discussion of their songwriting technique or their lives on tour are shallow. There is no mention of Flansburgh's crumbled relationship with his brother. There is no mention of the band's anger over the Factory Showroom demo leak. No mention of the mastering blunder for Apollo 18 in Europe. The Johns slyly imply that commissioned work is the reason they released no albums in the five years between Factory Showroom and Mink Car, any rumors that they feared overexposure by Restless Records's releasing a number of compilation albums notwithstanding.

There is some nice footage. I liked Michael McKean's reading of End of the Tour, and there's some stage show footage that is neat to see. On the whole, I will repeat, it does not feel like a serious documentary so much as it does a TV special. There is a serious lack of depth when it comes to the music of They Might Be Giants, the creation of ablums, life on tour, life outside the band, and what just plain drives them. I wonder how much of that is the director's inexperience, the overall lighthearted tone of Gigantic, or maybe the Johns' predilections for witticisms as opposed to just giving a simple straight answer. Someday, I'd like to see a real documentary about They Might Be Giants